For the independent musician, sounding good isn't a rarity only available to well-funded artists anymore - it is essential. Music sales may have wanted, but that doesn't mean that recorded music is on its way out. Far from it. More music is being consumed on more devices by more fans than ever before in history! Artists are making their music available on internet and satellite radio, online music streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Deezer, and YouTube, selling on direct-to-fan sites such as CD Baby, Bandcamp, and ReverbNation, and still pushing sales through ‘traditional' online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon MP3. Simply put, there is no excuse for an artist to put out poor recordings. For some people, audio engineers are still mysterious. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of sound, creating fake, auto-tuned, drones out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every record, no matter the genre, gets touched by a recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer uses a plethora of microphones and technique to accurately capture and record the artist's performance as it occurs in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate music tracks and crafts the music to sound correct and convey the song's emotion. He sets the right levels, panning, equalization, compression, and adds creative effects where possible to complement the musician's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses specialized tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically sound room to subtly polish and prepare the production for final release and ensure the recording plays back well on a variety of playback systems. "While many audio techniques can enhance the final production, we engineers are not magicians and can't replace a poor performance or terrible recording," says Scott of Virtual Mix Engineer. Recorded music is more often used as promotional vessel for artists. The big dough these days is in converts, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a fan connects with a band's music, they'll listen to their records, tweet, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to help the artist and buy tickets to their shows, purchase apparel, and follow and interact with the group through social media. As the musician grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in film and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays well. To make it to this stage however, it all starts with a great song and polished recording. The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more bands releasing music than ever before. With a powerful laptop, some microphones, a DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can create and distribute music. One area where many artists fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in mixing. An experienced mixer has the right equipment, but most importantly the skills to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be hard for an artist, letting go and trusting your engineer will take your productions to the next level and help you stand out from the masses. Listeners are instantly attracted to a well-written and performed song that sounds like a hit. Spend the proper time in pre-production, ensuring your song and arrangement are as strong as possible. Then and only then, book time in the best studio you can afford to record your basic tracks. Hire a local or online mix engineer within your budget whose work and personality you like, and tweak the mix until you're happy. Finally, send the songs off to the mastering engineer for that final touch. Once your record is complete, you can get the music into multiple stores and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the ultimate example of the modern mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has mixed for multitudes of artists and labels from around the world in all musical genres ranging from Pop, Pop-Rock, Hip-Hop,RnB, Urban and more. His online mixing and mastering service, Virtual Mix Engineer, delivers musicians with spectacular sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Come say hi to Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
Related Articles -
mixing and mastering, mix master, mix beats,
|